CA1: courts can’t help people acquitted of crimes purge the taint of acquitted conduct

U.S. v. Coloian, No. 06-1357.  The defendant in a criminal case was convicted.  A few years later he moved for expungement of his “criminal record.”  The District Court held that 1) it had jurisdiction, and the inherent authority to grant this relief, but it wasn’t warranted; the first holds that 2) it lacked jurisdiction.  You can keep reading.

Now, I know what you are thinking.  The defendant should have been richer, so that he would not have gotten himself into trouble in the First place.  But the defendant was the “attorney and former Chief of Staff for the mayor of Providence.”  He got caught up in one of the corruption scandals in Rhode Island. 

So, Coloian suggested, [on equitable grounds] that he was different from other acquitted defendants in that he was a "practicing attorney" and "a member of the business community," and as such, a criminal record was particularly damaging because character and reputation are of particular importance in his chosen career.

The First acknowledges that under its own caselaw, Prou v. United States, 199 F.3d 37, 45 (1st Cir. 1999), once subject matter jurisdiction attaches, “courts may exceed their authority or otherwise err without loss of jurisdiction.”  I am thinking about KPMG (see our coverage here and here).  Citing Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Insurance Co. of America, 511 U.S. 375 (1994), the First holds that asserting power to order such expungement “...could not be said to serve the first purpose of ancillary jurisdiction.”  Got it?  Because expunging its own records doesn’t relate to its performance of its task, it lacks ancillary jurisdiction to do so.  The court does acknowledge a split in this area. 

Therefore, the law remains that federal prosecutors can bring all sorts of charges against people, and even if acquitted, the courts are absolutely powerless to offer the person a clean reputation in terms of their own records.  Hell, a prosecutor could even charge someone with someone with something that 1) has no factual basis; 2) is not a crime; and 3) is outside the court’s jurisdiction (e.g. conjuring Satan in Canada), and even if it was dismissed there would no way to bring the defendant back to square one.

I could understand if they ruled on equitable grounds, but this essentially means that courts are bending to the will of the executive.  Since the government argues that they can still increase sentences based on acquitted conduct, the judges of the First Circuit have today held that nothing prevents the government from filing frivolous charges against someone that is later acquitted by a jury, only to have those charges raised against them again.  These people are tainted for life, and the First has ceded the this part of the process of “justice” to the executive. 

DotD comments here.  RIlJ comments here.

Comments

[JFC]

In Massachusetts records of domestic violence restraining orders may never be expunged, Vaccaro v. Vaccaro, 425 Mass. 153 (1997), except when the record causes a lawyer to have difficulty getting her preferred job, Commissioner of Probation vs. Amanda Adams, 65 Mass. App. Ct. 725 (2006).

[S. COTUS]

First of all, I think it is ridiculous that DV restraining orders “can’t be expunged.” People can get them pretty easily. Secondly, as a constitutional matter this actually makes sense. Third, the Mass case hinged on a “fraud on the court” theory.

State courts would naturally have much more jurisdiction than Federal Courts of supposedly “limited” jurisdiction. The First didn’t address the “Fraud on the Court” issue, (which the Massachusetts courts did), but maybe the result would be different. Not sure.

Their Mass court’s rhetoric is interesting, “Law enforcement officials will not be notified that the order was vacated because it was obtained by fraud on the court. Rather, they may presume it was vacated because of the victim's failure to prosecute or because of insufficient evidence. The perpetuation of a fraud amounts to a defiling of the court itself when law enforcement officials rely on inaccurate information produced by the court.” So, in Adams, the court concluded, “We therefore conclude that a judge has the inherent authority to expunge a record of a 209A order from the Statewide domestic violence registry system in the rare and limited circumstance that the judge has found through clear and convincing evidence that the order was obtained through fraud on the court.”

The earlier case, Vaccaro, didn’t involve any “fraud on the court.”

But whatever the case, maybe it is just enough to say that some people have more important careers than others.

[GHV]

In Massachusetts now as in 1692 an allegation is proof of it’s own validity. An exparte order has permanent probative value. In Vaccaro v. Vaccaro, 425 Mass 153 (1997), the plaintiff a practicing attorney obtained the exparte order of protection (MA Ch 209A) from a judge she knew personally with an unsigned affidavit. After a full trial on the merits where the plaintiff was unable to substantiate any of the numerous allegations she made, the district court judge said he was unable to continue the order because the plaintiff who appeared genuinely fearful was “unreasonable”. There was no finding of “fraud on the court” regarding the plaintiff attorney who practiced regularly in the same court. The district court in another session was willing to expunge the defendant's name from the MA Domestic Violence Database. The Department of Probation, part of the trial court in MA was inserted(not intervened) as a party in the original action to warn the judiciary not to exercise any "inherent authority" in the area of DV. If there is a fraud being perpetuated it is being done by the State who records protection orders only as “opened” or “closed” regardless of the reason the order is vacated. Presumably this is to to keep Battered Women's Syndrome viable. For a few bytes of computer space the disposition of the DV hearings could be recorded accurately and provide a meaningful record but apparently this is not part of the scheme. The MA SJC has been willing to undercut justice in the greater interest of social justice.